Free markets have failed and we must now embark on a new transformative path of change. All of our problems are due to the greed of big business, so instead we need wise experts, technocrats, and politicians to make economic decisions for the common good in order to create a fair and prosperous society.
Sounds familiar. Sadly, this experiment never ends well. How unwell it will end in our case depends on how far Obama and his congress take us down the road to serfdom.
There’s nothing worse we could do than put politicians in charge of the economy. The argument is an old one, discredited and debunked, but one held as tightly as belief in the trinity, baptism by water, or that buddha is enlightenment; in essence it is this: that business is greedy and the rich are rich because they take wealth from the poor. The history of this nation and of the system of capitalism that has developed over many years says otherwise. Wealth in free capitalist countries benefits rich and poor alike because it is the thing called capital in capitalism that works for society, to improve, invest, and return a higher standard of living to both rich and poor alike.
The truth is that however bad you think free markets are– political markets are far worse. America is a country that has never been perfect, being peopled by persons of imperfection, but in the combination of freedom, individualism, property rights, classical liberal morality, and dare I say Judeo-Christian morality, we have achieved a standard of living unparalleled by any other civilization in the history of the earth. The poor in the United States live like no other class of poor in history.
It is not by chance or fickle fortune that wealth has accrued to the capitalist system. Even as Marx fundamentally misunderstood what was happening before his eyes he nevertheless recognized that capitalism does indeed produce wealth and this wealth produced higher standards of living for all.
Dismantling the structures of American capitalism and replacing it with the structures of a politicized economy will destroy wealth creation in this country and likely the world economy will follow. The transformation that Obama and his congress are now pursuing is nothing less than a grand looting. Eventually, if we follow it to it’s logical conclusion, it will effectively end American democracy and destroy personal freedom.